Leaving A Will = Loving Your Loved Ones

Many years ago when my mother was still alive, my father had gingerly broached the subject of will-writing to her but was stopped short of finishing his sentence. That was how taboo the subject was to my late mother and I am sure, still is, to many people today. She waved my dad away, telling him that we will have to ’sort’ things out ourselves AFTER she’s gone and not before.

Now that she has left us without a will, the family has been thrown into a tangle of bureaucratic mess. My mother passed away in 2004 and after a lapse of three years, we have yet to settle her estate. There was some complications with her banker and the application for the Letter of Administrator has taken more than a year before we were finally called for a hearing two days ago.

The Chinese have a saying – In life, may one never have to go to court and in death, never to hell. The hearing was held at the FT Land Office and conducted by the Land Office Administrator but in a court-like layout. The last time I was required to attend a hearing in court was for my divorce. It was an experience I wish I could forget and one which I would wish on no one, ever. The lawyer whom we had engaged to help us settle Mum’s estate was also there with us, so we thought we would just follow his cue. This hearing should be a breeze. Which it was, except for a few hems and haws, here and there.

The LO Administrator asked us to raise our right hand and recite the oath aloud by reading a card laid out on the table. Since my elder sister could not speak English, she read the oath in Chinese and the rest of us repeated after her. Honestly, I really didn’t know what I was saying. Both Lara and I tried hard to keep a straight face. Since both of us had received an English education, those proper sounding Chinese words seemed so foreign to us. Anyway, once we got over with that, the LO Administrator shot us a number of questions i.e. when did our mother die, how many times she was married, whether her parents were alive (which sounded a little absurd to me because if they had been alive, they would have to be more than 100 years old) etc. Some of the questions were pretty embarrassing because it dug into history which, even we girls were not aware of.

Once he has verified all the details with the documents we had submitted to the Land Office earlier, he appointed one of us as administrator for my late mother’s estate. Though there is still much to be done after this, at least, the wheels have finally been set into motion.

The moral of the story is, please draw up your will if you have not done so already. Our lives are in the hands of our Maker, our days already numbered. Would writing a will hasten one’s journey to the other world?? It doesn't matter even if you don't have a million dollars to your name. At least, your loved ones will be able to carry out your last wishes and know what to do with the material things you leave behind on earth. With a will in place, you can then rest (no pun intended) assure that your estate will be divided according to how you will want it to be and not how the Law will deal with in the absence of a will.

It's not a difficult thing to do. You can either engage a lawyer or even a professional will writer to help you out. In fact, you can even do it yourself as long as your will adheres to certain conditions which makes it valid in the eyes of the law. And don't procrastinate because who knows when is our appointed time to go!

Dying intestate is the most cruel legacy you can leave your loved ones.